So underground

So, I've been back from Vacance for a few days and really wish I was still traveling. It started off well with a day trip to Grenoble to meet another assistant, Grace. We started the day by "monté'ing" (climbing) a hill that takes you up to the Bastille, an old fortress overlooking the city of Grenoble. However, it was too foggy to see anything at the top so we "descendu'ed" and spent the day in town. Ended up being a sunny, clear day after that...we clearly have great timing. I stayed with her in Chambéry that night and hung out with her "colocs," the French people she shares an apartment with. She even welcomed me there with a home-cooked, Southern-style dinner. It was a great time, and I decided that Chambéry is somewhere I will start going more often.

Monday and Tuesday of Vacances were spent in Lyon with Grace and Sarah Nickel, a friend from Puget Sound who was passing through France at the end of her 2-month Euro Trip. We were also joined by Patrick, an assistant from Colorado and his girlfriend, Molly, for a day. We had a great time despite the never-ending rain. We met French people, shopped, and had a traditional Lyonnais dinner at a "bouchon," which is the name for a traditional Lyonnais restaurant. Lyon is the gastronomic capital of France, and now we all know why!

Then there was Prague, which inspired the title for this post. Prague was, hands down, one of the coolest cities I have ever seen. I went there by bus with an assistant from Montana, Bryan. The bus trip was about 17 hours and, although I was dreading it, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. There's too much to say about Prague and too little time, so I'll touch on some highlights and elaborate later:
-AMAZING beer everywhere for a little more than a dollar...favorite being the beer garden.
-Tons of places that are, literally, underground...cafés, bars, restaurants, etc.
-A great Czech tour guide who said everything as if she was telling a ghost story
-An intense customs stop at the German/Czech border
-Honey cake and wine at the 'underground' literary café across from our hostel
-Our hostel roommates, Richard and Aaron, who were both super entertaining in really different ways. Richard was about 65 yrs old and never stopped talking, and Aaron was a typical New Yorker who introduced himself by offering us bread that he stole from a restaurant whose service he "didn't like".
Okay, gotta run and catch a bus to Valence, but I will definitely elaborate when I get a chance.

Hope you're all doing well and I'll talk to you soon!